Earlier this year, Julie Leischner, a L’Bri independent representative, asked me to help her create a fresh, clean website for her to share skincare tips and also promote her business. Since she’s all about the aloe, we went with fresh colors like blue and green.

Are you looking for a website redesign? Looking to launch a website or blog? Let’s talk! I’m offering $50 off any WordPress design service (complete site, not just modifications) until August 30. Send me an e-mail at amy@amykant-dot-com.

FitMilwaukee came into my life at a time I needed it most, so when founders Anne Munkwitz and Tracey Gessner were looking for someone to redesign the site, I jumped at the opportunity. Not only are these gals good friends, they’re also amazing athletes who inspire Milwaukeeans to get off the couch and get moving!

Before, FitMilwaukee.com was functional but lacked pizazz and a clear design. Now, it’s clean, fresh and easy to navigate. We moved the site to WordPress from BlogEngine.net so it would be easier for the FitMilwaukee team to make changes to the site, without having to find a web designer/developer to do it for them.

I know Anne and Tracey love the new site, but just in case you don’t believe me, take a look at what Anne had to say:

Amy volunteered her time to completely redesign the FitMilwaukee.com website. Not only did she offer to, but she was EXCITED to help. That’s something notable about Amy — she tackles a project with full enthusiasm. She took one look at our existing logo and her wheels were turning. She put together a fabulous header – a scrolling montage of images of members of our community. She also selected perfect colors to complement our logo and make it pop, and ultimately made the site consistent and beautiful. She asked for our opinion the whole way, taking time to make changes for all the suggestions we had. She’s very open to input but also got us started with a vision that we could have never seen. She’s got a great eye for design and we are so happy with the way it turned out that sometimes I go to the site just to stare at how pretty it is!

- Anne Munkwitz, co-founder of FitMilwaukee.com

Are you looking for a website redesign? Looking to launch a website or blog? Let’s talk! I’m offering $50 off any WordPress design service (complete site, not just modifications) until August 30. Send me an e-mail at amy@amykant-dot-com.

Little Saint Anything draws on the influences of bands like RHCP, Modest Mouse, White Stripes and Radiohead. They’re a clash between Led Zeppelin, the Chili’s and Jack White. Little Saint Anything likes that heavy but oh so sweet sound. They are located in Mequon and Glendale, Wisconsin.

When I was approached by Little Saint Anything, they told me they were just looking for a simple site – 4-5 pages deep – where they could have a few of their songs, some photos and other information about the band. Basically, they wanted a central place to tell family, friends and potential clients about. They were spread thin across a variety of social networks and band sites. Now they have everything in one place.

So, here’s my Top Five Must-Have WordPress Plugins:

1. Akismet – This baby blocks just about every spam comment on my site. It’s a standard WordPress plugin, which should be included with the installation of your WordPress blog on your server. If it isn’t, make sure this is one of the first plugins you activate. Don’t believe it’s worth it? Check out my stats:



2. WordPress Automatic Upgrade – Even for a WordPress addict expert superfan such as myself, upgrading to the newest version of WordPress can be tricky. This plugin takes all the guesswork out of upgrading. I always include this plugin when I set up a client’s new blog. It’s a life saver.
3. All in one SEO Pack – SEO has quickly become a hot topic on the interwebs. (and, rightly so.) SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is a fancy way of saying “ranking higher in google and other search engines.” This plugin requires a little work after it’s installed. You can’t just install it and expect it to do all the work for you. Once installed, you should see this box near the bottom of the page whenever you are creating a new post.
   Here’s where you’re going to summarize your blog post with keywords in both the title and the description. Here’s an example of what I did for this post:
   
4. Twitter Tools – These days, everyone is all-a-Twitter, and rightly so. The social networking site is addicting. There are plenty of place where you can find out more about Twitter if you’re not already on it – just Google “what is twitter” and you should get a bazillion results. It’s a great, free tool you should be using for your blog/business. This plugin will automatically tweet for you each time a new blog is posted. Basically, it saves you the step of writing up a tweet and shortening the url yourself.
5. Sociable – This is one of my new favorite plugins. It will help your posts become viral. If your readers want to share your post, they don’t have to grab the url and post it into a tweet, on their Facebook page, fark, digg or stumble upon. All they have to do is click on one of the little icons (you should see it at the bottom of this post) and voila! Your post has viral potential.

There are thousands of plugins out there and I’m hoping to start blogging more about the techie side of me! If you have any good plugins you’d like me to check out, post a comment.

I created this blog look for Anne-Marie using digital scrapbooking kit items from the Neon Tantrum Kit by Studio mgl and glitter from Holly McCaig’s Jubilee Kit at 2Peas.

This blog was loosely based off the Weeds WordPress Theme by Natalie Jost and features a bunch of fun plugins, like the Slickr Gallery, TwitThis, PostFooter and Twitter Tools.

Get your own word art here: http://wordle.net/

H/T Holly

That’s how i feel about my blog redesign.

so, bear with me please! still gotta import blogroll and other sidebar stuff and finish modifying this template.

I’ll try this template out for awhile and see what happens. I really want to customize my CSS, but I figure if I can’t work a full day because of pain – typing makes things worse – I really can’t code at home.

Gotta get better… SOON!!!

Hmmm, gotta order some biznass cards too.